Quotes About Writing

The first job of a writer is to be honest.

I always market research my books before I hand them in by showing them to five or six close friends who I trust to be honest with me, so they are very heavily re-written already.

You just have to make sure you're writing about something that's true. It has to be honest and it has to have a real emotion behind it, regardless of where it's coming from.

The fun one can have writing books about books is limitless, to be honest.

To be honest, I chose romance because writing a book seemed so dauntingly long. I looked around for something short, discovered Harlequin romances, and decided to read a few to see if I could do it.

Because I came to acting quite late, I kind of think one of the few attributes that I do have is that I try to be honest with the character, with the writing. I'm not a tricksy actor; I'm not exactly a scenery-chewing kind of actor.

To be honest, I used to always procrastinate when I write. I mean, I love writing, but I hate it.

I've done a lot of work in Hollywood and theatre, but to be honest, the biggest pleasure I've ever got is from the TV single plays I've written. It's a format where you don't mind saying, 'I want to tackle some important themes head on.'

I have to be honest about this: I wouldn't tell a lot of kids to go and be writers. It's a tough, tough business. It's not a business. It's more like a tough road. It's a really tough road.

Usually with me, the ideas I have for movies just sort of pop into my head. I've read a bunch of screenwriting books over the years and, to be honest, they're mostly pretty crappy.

I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.

No matter how many books you've written, whenever you sit down to write a new book, you always feel the same challenge - how do you shape this story into a book that people are going to love.

If you write fiction, you have to love your characters. It's like your family. You don't have to like them, but you have to love them.

I think that you have to keep the reader front and centre if you're going to write something that people are going to love and be entertained by.

There's a point at which writing a book, or a long article, begins to feel like mental labor, and it's too painful to connect in the world in any real way mid-process. The only way to survive is to write until it is all said and done.

Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write.

I've always been able to survive by writing, though.

Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human population of the world. But in my little, soft realm of trying to amuse a few dozen middle-class people with my books and articles, I did struggle to survive in my own way.

Comedians have to write to survive because you don't get cast for your beauty.

I just wanted to eat, to survive. I started singing a cappella in bars. I saved up money to get my first guitar and started writing songs.

I was lucky to have made it to 23 before my world fell apart, but when it did, I had no idea how to survive. It was a rough year. I cried - a lot. I complained - a lot. I also wrote - a lot.

It's a different world: when I'm writing 'Toast,' I've got one foot in 1974 and one foot in the modern day, because the modern day is nowhere near as funny or interesting.

Worst part of being a writer: having to tell my toddler that I can't play with her because I'm working. Keep in mind that working consists of me at home with a laptop on my lap sitting on the couch. It doesn't look like working. I don't have a hammer or anything.

I was actually really sick of being a broke actress with a toddler, so I wrote a script.